Volca-Freesound

December 23, 2018

Volca-Freesound is an online app to load samples on the Korg Volca Sample.

It selects random samples from the freesound.org database. So it’s not a sample manager like Vosyr or Caustic Editor. This app chooses random samples by itself. You can only control the maximum length of the samples and which Volca slots to overwrite, but not much else.

The app is a sort of ‘sample randomizer’. Use it to bring new life to your Volca Sample. Let it create a selection of new and unexpected samples that might inspire you to create new music.

The download and transfer process now starts. In the app the currently transferring slot button turns red, and green when the transfer is done. The Volca shows the slot number in its LED display.

When all slots are finished, or when the Volca’s 4MB of memory is full – whichever comes first – the process is complete.

Press the FUNCTION button on the Volca to exit transfer mode, so you can preview the new samples.

The whole process is also demonstrated in this tutorial:

Transfer receipt

After transfer ends a Receipt button appears below the Start button.

The receipt is a text file with information about the downloaded samples, such as license type and Freesound URL.

Freesound audio files can have different types of licenses, depending on the choice of the owner and uploader of the file. If you end up using a sample in a released song it will be necessary to know if there are restrictions to its use.

The files downloaded by the app are 128kbps MP3 previews of the sound, which I think is a good enough quality for a slightly lo-fi 12 bit sampler like the Volca Sample. If you like a sample and decide to use it in a higher fidelity music production, you will need a way to find the source of that sample.

If you create a Freesound account and log in, you will be able to download the sound in the highest quality available.

If you forget to download your receipt it will be almost impossible to to ever find back the information about your samples.

Open source

Volca-Freesound is an open source project. You can find the source code at